Iron men (and women) we have loved

Who doesn’t love our robot friends, even the ones that want to wipe us out? Cinemalicious this week takes a look at some of filmdom’s finest tincan companions…

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The star of Pixar’s ninth consecutive computer animated hit was a plucky little sentient trash compactor – not much of a looker for a would be Romeo. His neck suggested a wattle, and his clumsy metal hands could barely gras the sleek, curved, eggshell-white fins of his lady love, the probe robot EVE. But WALL?E wooed his paramour – and moviegoers of all ages – anyway, even as the film’s story line sparker politicised debate over it’s depiction of a future Earth laid waste by consumerism. Director Andrew Stanton says he was baffled: "People seized on things to plead their own causes. I just chose robots to tell a love story."

WALL•E wasn’t the first hunk of metal to rivet us. A look back at sci-fi heavyweights through the decades: